The government of India is pushing ahead with plans to complete the move from analogue to digital television transmission by 2017. As the leading public service broadcaster in India, Doordarshan has an obligation to cover the whole country and to reflect the diversity of Indian society, including content in the more than 40 languages. At the same time, it is promoting a boost in quality and viewer engagement by rolling out high definition channels, as well as delivering its multi-lingual content across multiple platforms including mobile devices in the future.

“This is not only a large-scale project for Doordarshan, but it is also one of the most high profile and important projects the broadcaster has undertaken,” said Joe Khodeir, senior vice president Asia at Harris Broadcast. “Our DVB-T2 solution maximises spectrum capacity, allowing Doordarshan to roll out multiple channels serving different communities as well as offer multiple HD channels. For a project of this scope and significance, Doordarshan looked for a partner with a strong local service commitment and presence along with best-in-class technologies that delivered the lowest lifecycle costs. Our Maxiva™ULX architecture provides the best power efficiency in the market, which was a critical consideration for Doordarshan when energy consumption is such a large part of the operating cost.”

Doordarshan, the Indian national television network devoted to public service broadcasting, is one of the largest broadcasting organizations in the world in terms of infrastructure (studios and transmitters), the variety of software and the vastness of the viewership. About 92 percent of India’s population receives Doordarshan programming through a network of 35 channels, 67 studio centers and 1415 terrestrial transmitters.